Gingerbread cheesecake {from a recycled gingerbread house}

Every year we try and make a gingerbread house together. Living in London it is really easy to get hold of gingerbread kits, and I picked up one in Ikea and Flying Tiger (or Tiger as it used to be known). They are definitely a Christmassy thing but I think it’s becoming more acceptable to enjoy them all year round. A few years ago we decorated a Valentine’s gingerbread house and even a Halloween gingerbread house too.

December was unusually busy so we didn’t get round to using the gingerbread kit I bought from Flying Tiger. We all love cheesecake so I thought I would experiment and use it as the biscuit base for a cheesecake instead!

Gingerbread cheesecake using flying tiger ginger bread house

I unwrapped the gingerbread house kit and as you can see there were plenty of pieces to use.

I placed them inside a food bag and bashed them with a rolling pin until I had a bag of crumbs.

I melted 40g of unsalted butter and added this to about half of the biscuit crumbs.

This is the easiest cheesecake base and smelled so good! I divided the mixture between my three gorgeous Orla Kiely bowls, pushing it down with the back of a small spoon.

Then it was time to make the cheesecake top. I followed the recipe from my Cath Kidston Teatime book, I thought I had blogged about this recipe before but I can’t find it. The recipe uses 200g cream cheese, 200ml double cream, 40g icing sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla extract. This makes a really delicious cheesecake and you can add mini gingerbread men to the top or leave it as it is. Absolutely delicious and a great way to use up any unwanted gingerbread house kits!